Dinah Maria Craik Poems

Dinah Maria CraikDinah Maria Craik (née Dinah Maria Mulock, also often credited as Miss Mulock)
(20 April 1826 - 12 October 1887) was an English novelist and poet. She was born
at Stoke-on-Trent and brought up in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.
After the death of her mother in 1845, Dinah Maria Mulock had settled in London
about 1846. She was determined to obtain a livelihood by her pen, and, beginning
with fiction for children, advanced steadily until placed in the front rank of
the women novelists of her day.
She is best known for the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1857). She followed
this with A Life for a Life (1859), which she considered to be the best of her
novels; others were The Ogilvies (1849), Olive (1850), The Head of the Family
(1851), Agatha's Husband (1853), Hannah (1871), and Young Mrs. Jardine (1879).
Other works include Avillion and other Tales (1853), and The Little Lame Prince
and his Travelling Cloak (1875). She published some poetry, narratives of tours
in Ireland and Cornwall, and A Woman's Thoughts about Women (1858).
She married George Lillie Craik, a partner with Alexander Macmillan in the
publishing house of Macmillan & Company, in 1864. They adopted a foundling baby
girl, Dorothy, in 1869.
At Shortlands, near Bromley, Kent, while in a period of preparation for
Dorothy's wedding, she died of heart failure on 12 October 1887, aged 61. Her
last words were reported to have been: "Oh, if I could live four weeks longer!
but no matter, no matter!"